I actually have some sympathy for Rachel Gilmore. She's very young, very inexperienced and she is clearly out of her depth when it comes to covering and commenting on serious political, social and ideological issues for a major mainstream news organization. But Global News seems intent on raising her profile beyond being the face of their corporate presence on TikTok - the short-form video hosting platform favoured by adolescents and others afflicted with limited attention spans and not much use for content that requires conscious thought.
Presumably the marketing strategy is to get a generation of young people with no interest in television-based news to invest in the Global News brand. I imagine the hope is that this will somehow translate into a new, lifelong audience for their product or whatever.
To call what Rachel does to the news 'dumbing it down' would be an insult to the intelligence of dumb people. If you think that's just being unkind for the sake of it, have a look at the video below.
You will notice that Rachel's take on political reporting consists of making the vague assertion that "some politicians are getting closer with the far right". She then assures us that 'experts are getting concerned'. What follows is a series of frenetic jump cuts of herself layered over a background of constantly changing images which she points at while leaping from one accusation and assertion to another.
We see Rachel's head and torso superimposed on images of the World Economic Forum logo, popping from one side of the screen to the other as she flatly drones: "For years politicians from around the world have toyed with far-right ideas. From spreading unfounded conspiracy theories about the World Economic Forum to amplifying populist ideas from the fringes of society for political gain."
Now you're probably thinking... Which politicians? What unfounded conspiracy theories? What populist ideas? What does she mean by 'the fringes of society'? And what does any of this have to do with the far right?
Spoiler alert... she never gets around to linking any of these claims and characterizations to anything demonstrably true. I guess they didn't cover that in Journalism for TikTok 101.
The funniest/most bizarre part of Rachel's 'exposé' occurs when she tries to associate unnamed MPs ( I wonder who they could be?) with neo Nazis or something.
She starts by pointing at the malevolent "hat and hoodie" of an alleged organizer of the trucker convoy. This journalistic pointing is immediately followed by an allegation about a video supposedly posted by an unidentified convoy "supporter". She tells us that this unspecified someone-or-other shares a "theory" in the video that "was thought to be" a motivating factor in a mass shooting which - yet again - is left unspecified.
Real Nuremburg trial level stuff here.
Anyway, then comes the gotcha moment she's been leading up to. It's the big payoff where she brings all of this together to connect Pierre Poilievre... we all know who you're talking about Rachel... and other Conservative MPs to the unsavory characters supposedly associated with the convoy protests. Rachel tells us that despite all of her reporting on the odious hoodie wearing, theory sharing, 'literally Hitler' types she just mentioned, a number of MPs nevertheless "met with key convoy figures in June... but not the ones I just mentioned."
The obvious question is... then why did you mention them?
A 'journalist' using guilt by association to smear and discredit people she opposes politically is intellectually and professionally corrupt at the best of times. But guilt by association twice removed and justified by pointing at some guy's hoodie is an entirely new level of 'What the hell happened to Canadian journalism?'.
The entire 'report' lasts less than 59 seconds. And yet Rachel assures whatever audience this attracts that she has provided them with what they "need to know."
The whole thing has the tone and depth of an opinionated high school student reading a poorly researched homework assignment in front of her class. It has little if any resemblance to a professional journalist doing anything like reporting the news.
Judge for yourself:
None of this is a one-off for Rachel. She's establishing it as her shtick.
Global News is using her naivete and obliviousness about journalistic principles to manufacture defamatory narratives about anyone who opposes or threatens Liberal government power and control.
And people are noticing.
Political commentator and columnist Spencer Fernando recently wrote a piece calling out Rachel's smear campaign against Conservative Party leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre.
Fernando points out that a properly functioning media in a liberal democracy holds the people in power to account. He contrasts this with corrupt media in authoritarian states which attempts to focus the public's scorn on the opposition.
Fernando writes:
"One of the key features of an authoritarian state is that the media infrastructure is used to direct attention and anger towards the opposition.
This is in contrast to free nations, where the media holds the government accountable, recognizing that the media – when operating properly – forms an essential counterweight to the power of the government and can hold the government accountable.
Out of those two – media attacking the opposition, or holding the government accountable – which one does Canada more closely resemble?
We know the answer."
Fernando highlights Rachel's Global News articles and Twitter posts in which she defames both Poilievre and military veteran James Topp. Rachel again strains credulity by attempting to establish Poilievre's guilt which is inferred by his brief interaction with Topp. Topp's guilt is in turn inferred by association with an obscure podcaster he spoke to while traversing the country to protest Trudeau's authoritarian COVID policies.
If this extremely tenuous standard of guilt by association by association is sufficient to condemn and discredit a member of the Opposition, what should we conclude about the two highest ranking politicians in the party in power meeting and posing for pictures with Andriy Parubiy?
Parubiy is a Ukranian politician whom the magazine The Nation describes as having "cofounded and led two neo-Nazi organizations: the Social-National Party of Ukraine (later renamed Svoboda), and Patriot of Ukraine, whose members would eventually form the core of Azov".
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States, covering progressive political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis.
Rachel Gilmore and her employers at Global News have nothing to say about the Liberal Prime Minister and his deputy Prime Minister going well beyond what could be categorized as "getting closer" with the actual "far right" in Europe. They have nothing to say about the Trudeau government training members of Nazi battalions in Ukraine as reported by the Ottawa Citizen in 2021 and 2022 either.
It's not just professional commentators like Spencer Fernando who are noticing journalists abusing their platform in this manner.
The fact is that a lot of Canadians are much smarter and more insightful than the professional journalists they're expected to rely on to inform them about these issues.
So Rachel is hearing from Canadians who are fed up with seeing the media used to push a partisan agenda and to demonize individuals and views which they support.
Unsurprisingly in the age of social media, a portion of the backlash Rachel is receiving is ugly and inappropriate. The reason we know this is due to another peculiar phenomenon of the social media era - journalists whining in public about how hard done by they are:
It's hard not to notice that these public displays of self-pity are justified by selectively drawing attention to the most extreme comments from their dumbest, least articulate critics. This allows Rachel and her colleagues who engage in this self-indulgence to manufacture the 'Look at how unfairly attacked I am! This is what it's like to be journalist in 2022!' narrative.
At the same time, all of the well reasoned and valid criticism of their journalism - like Spencer Fernando's exquisitely argued critique - remains unanswered and ignored.
Bizarrely - and somewhat hilariously - Rachel followed her blatant effort to solicit pity from the Internet with this implausibly contradictory and boastful declaration:
Apparently Rachel drew attention on Twitter to all of those nasty comments and whined "This is what it’s like to be a journalist in 2022" because she didn't want people to feel sorry for her.
Good grief.
It's worth noting that even Pierre Poilievre himself has publicly called out these blatantly partisan attacks:
Poilievre's remarks drew a rebuke from Sun Media editor and columnist Lorrie Goldstein. Lorrie accused Poilievre of "singling out individual reporters for vilification" and suggested he was guilty of making Rachel a target for potential harm:
Poilievre didn't 'single out' or identify anyone by name. Neither did he engage in 'vilification'. In fact, all he did was identify a campaign of 'vilification' against himself and "thousands of other Canadians" by "one of Global News' so-called journalists" as an example of why "trust in the media is at an all-time low."
But if Lorrie is looking for public figures to rebuke for genuinely using their platform to target people for "vilification" - and who have done so repeatedly and with total disregard for the "potentially dangerous" consequences of such "unwise" behaviour - I invite him to peruse the sample of his Canadian media establishment colleagues below.
Insisting these professionals shouldn't be 'singled out' and held accountable for targeting people, fomenting hatred towards them and whipping up an appetite for retribution makes absolutely no sense:
I'll leave you to consider one of Rachel Gilmore's most recent, shall we say provocative, tweets:
Of course, the issue of COVID 'vaccines' and the never-ending series of boosters are provocative for any number of reasons.
But what is most provocative in this instance is, of course, the bizarre, brand-new phenomenon of people feeling motivated to publicly advertise that they've taken certain medications.
What motivates someone to take a picture of herself with a Band-aid on her arm and post it online?
It would make a great human interest story for a journalist to investigate.
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